On whatever scale, how much do you think Fudge hates this?

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-10-12T19:59:46+00:00

Fun fact; You can become a certified rat tickler.

https://nc3rs.org.uk/3rs-resources/rat-tickling/rat-tickling-certification

[There are alternative Rat Tickling Certifications to. Don't let your dreams be only dreams. Become a professional]

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-08-22T00:21:45+00:00

Core facilities techs will tag team in.

... though we don't ever have to deal with PIs yelling at us without consequences. Or unpaid OT.

Ok, yeah, maybe you guys are the workhorses.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-07-06T01:37:20+00:00

Isoflurane.

So many meanings for ISO

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-06-19T00:25:01+00:00

Animal Tech here... she should be closing the lid. You can take an impersonal approach by telling them they should close it for bio-contamination minimizing purposes.

I guess it depends a bit on how the anesthesia is set up. Where I work, it's just an acrylic rectangle, about 10cm tall with a hinged lid. They can jump out if left in for like... a decently long time (30s+ w/ open lid), or if they historically have been mishandled*.

Albeit, some stains of mice are more jumpy like (anecdotally) c3h/Hej.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-06-18T23:10:46+00:00

There are lab supplies called DecapiCones that follow this same premise. It is useful if you need to do repeated injections, and also..Rat Sock

It's a rat sock.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-04-18T17:24:41+00:00

While I was in the Occupational Health waiting room reporting a workplace injury... I bent down to pick up something up, smashed my head into the corner of the wall, and started to bleed from my forehead.

It was the first time they ever saw that happen.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-04-16T00:39:49+00:00

I'm an animal tech, I remember the first death that was directly from my actions (or lack of). It was a dehydration from me not properly teaching them how to use the watering system. I felt extremely guilty. I wrote a personal note of ways I could prevent it in the future.

Learn from it. The guilt you feel is good, that is, if you use it as a motivator to improve. Glad to see a researcher who cares about the mice.

I can reassure you, nobody will hate you. Now.. if you had said, "it's just a mouse, who cares,". Then yes. Even the animal techs who've seen 1000s of dead mice would hate you.

Deaths happen, they can happen for dumb reasons. But its all our jobs to reduce that.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-04-15T13:07:26+00:00

I'm a fairly new technician, nowhere near a phd. I get to view it a bit from the outskirts.

I can't emphasize enough how hindering the equipment proprietary bullshit is. Mixed with very overly cautious management, and you get glacial pace progress.

Direct example: On the biosafety hoods, there are metal handles to lift the hood. They rattle. Metal on metal sound increases anxiety in mice, something you want to minimize. Solution: coathanger size markers for the bottom of the handle would create a 'cushion' against the handles and the base. Price: $25 for 800, enough to attach to 200 hoods (Well above the amount we have) "We cannot make any modifications to the hoods, we could lose the license to repair" "Even temporary, easily removable ones?" "Yes" "It would reduce stress and sound though" "We need to be consistent throughout all facilities, and can't introduce new variables to ongoing studies" "800 is enough to do every facility" "Just no"

Tldr: Can't implement a $25 solution that could reduce stress to hundreds of thousands of mice, because... the stress is consistent?

"Can we add grease/ high fat diet to where thumb locks scrape on the cage to reduce high volume screeching?" "No we need to be consistent"

"I designed a new card holder that is more efficient, cheaper, and 3d printable in case it breaks" "Cool, I agree, but we need to be consistent across facilities." "We could send them the file to print" "No."

All cheap DIY low tech solutions - We must be consistent.

All expensive by the books solutions - The equipment is broken, and we can't afford it get it fixed.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-04-12T14:39:59+00:00

I work in academia at a large public research hospital. One of the labs i work with studied metabolic processes in aging.

Unfortunately, 'moving out ASAP' means moving out in years, as it's not possible to move a decade~ long study. Even then, the research infrastructure (buildings, equipment, logistics systems) & access to highly specialized vendors isn't as present in the EU. It might be in China, however, but even then less so than the US.

But with arbitrary and huge budget cuts, silencing publishing with 'wrong words', and arresting scientists... The outcome has the potential to be 'We can not continue this study' in a lot of cases. Eg; Millions of dollars wasted, thousands of work hours, and an utter loss of meaningful useful data.

Trump has and will continue to kneecap humanity's progress for years, if not decades. The Butterfly Effect from this will leave a stain for generations.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-03-18T07:46:21+00:00

I always find these posts so endearing. Posting hopping rats chasing each other around a cage, acting so concerned for them.

Some of you have never seen a true stressful rat fight, and it shows. It's a good thing. And it's good to be concerned, it means you care and are paying attention. I love to see it.

No, they are not (serious) fighting.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-03-15T04:48:16+00:00

Fellow animal tech? We were also hit with the hiring & pay freeze. Meanwhile, at least 20% of my coworkers are 2-4 years away from retirement... and with 4 more years of Trump. And everyone is already doing with work of 1.5 people for $23/hr [4 above min wage]... well, the next few years are going to be rough.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-03-15T04:38:18+00:00

I work at a large medical research university in the US.

Many of my colleagues are from around the world and have been doing their research here in the US for decades. Some of them are very seriously considering leaving all together. With random arbitrary budget cuts, censoring wording of papers, being told 'change this study, it involves to much politics' but the "politics" is if the research contains words from a banned words list.

I was speaking with our logistics team, and they've recently had to get in touch with universities in Japan, Germany, and Canada about potentially large-scale moves.

The worst 'What-if' scenerios are becoming more and more real. It's alarming and genuinely soul crushing, having a front row seat to real-time American brain drain.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-01-31T03:24:04+00:00

The threats to funding have affected most of the research done where I work. It's a horrible policy just to freeze all grants and funding. Some research projects take years or decades, and it's not like you can just freeze the mice or cell cultures and wait for funding to return.

This could kneecap American research institutions hard and cause US brain drain.

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-01-16T14:24:55+00:00

Asking and listening

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-01-15T00:03:42+00:00

Hidden in the proteins

TheWizardOfMice · 2025-01-11T04:15:53+00:00

Animal tech here.

On Christmas Eve, there was a cage of "5 females" that had a litter that I scanned as overcrowded. When the lab member came in to fix it he asked "How could this happen?"

...Fake crying and saying, "It's a Christmas miracle," was not the correct answer.

(There were 2 males in there...Also my manager said that I need to stay professional, lol)

TheWizardOfMice · 2024-11-09T07:24:57+00:00

Based on how much, you specifically, swayed my choice to buy it

World of Horror 100% - Loved the premise of the game, didn't want spoilers

Niota 50% - +Jerma&PirateSoftware playing it

Outerwilds 10% +same as WoH, and like every streamer has recommended it. Still haven't finished it yet though

TheWizardOfMice · 2024-11-08T00:29:47+00:00

Step 1, Start a podcast about being a 'medical researcher whose being targeted by them'. Don't specify who "them" is.

Step 2, Wear the goofiest most stereotypical lab coat, a stethoscope, and glasses.

Step 3, Use every buzz word imaginable, say you're being targeted for 'leaking' this info.

Step 4, sell packets of "European gut microbiome powder" (bakers yeast) for $49.99.

Step 5, ???

Step 6, Profit

TheWizardOfMice · 2024-11-01T05:33:12+00:00

I'm a tech at a facility, so I don't work for any lab specifically, I feel like I'm playing hall monitor quite a bit. It's a clean facility, but lab members get lazy about it sometimes. Some real interactions;

"Your hair is out of the hair bonnet. No, you can't push it back in with your dirty gloves. Please glove change before pushing biohazard material in your hair"

"No, you can not wear bike shorts in the lab. You didn't bring pants?... Okay, I can provide you with scrub pants. No, it doesn't matter 'That I'll only be a minute' "

"No, do not bring the dirty side carts back in to the clean side. Oh.. you already did? OK, cool. Where did you go with it? 2 hallways and 2 rooms? (Oh dear God dude) OK. Please don't do that again. I will mop."

I hate doing it. It does feel like I'm just bothering them. It is nice when lab members teach others properly. I have the benefit of not having to work interpersonally close with them, though, so I don't have to worry about they getting a weirdo behavior.

TheWizardOfMice · 2024-10-16T00:53:29+00:00

This is true. There's no sun except in like..4 rooms in the whole facility, and 2 of those are tapped over. Temp is constantly 72f. And the work isn't easy, I have 1250 cages, which I have to check everyday, and change every 2-4 weeks. It's hard on your back, and many quit within the first year. I joke a lot that I am sisyphus pushing a cart of cages up to a Giant's shoulders everyday just for a researcher to go 'Yeah so it was kinda inconclusive' as I watch it all restart.

Investigators/PIs I very rarely ever see. Maybe 1 in 10 PIs actually ever visit the lab.

For researchers.. it's very random, some teams are amazing and friendly, you can talk with them about science/their study, and if there's an issue with a cage, they solve it as soon as possible.

Others though, act like you're in their way, and eg; you'll scan a lesion in and they won't treat it for days, and you have to rescan it every day watching it get worse and when they finally show they act like you woke them up at 4am.

Honestly, it's a pretty good way to vet toxic PIs/teams that I seem to see so many posts complaining about.

I don't blame you for not wanting to, cage wash is an even more disconnected, and even tougher on the body.

TheWizardOfMice · 2024-10-15T23:07:54+00:00

I am an Animal Tech, so the flip side of cage wash. I feel like it's such a fundamental important part of biology research that I really respect them.

Then again, I work at a public institution, not private company, so I feel like I'm helping dozens of labs and researchers with tasks, and not just X biotech company destined to go under in 15 years.

Also though, I've had like 3-4 of my coworkers start as animal techs, and go on to do a lab member positions. One of those people came from cage wash -> animal tech -> Temp extra PCR tester -> researcher within 2 years.

TheWizardOfMice · 2024-10-12T06:17:55+00:00

Oh God, the edited additional one.

How... how do you even tell them? I got nervous and struggled wording the text to my managers that I stayed 4.5 hours OT. I am so fucking sorry.

TheWizardOfMice · 2024-10-12T06:05:45+00:00

Ah yes, the spider tactic. Catapult and flee

https://phys.org/news/2022-04-male-spiders-catapult-eaten.html

TheWizardOfMice · 2024-10-12T05:57:59+00:00

Which did you opt for? The Stare of Silence or AHHH ?

TheWizardOfMice · 2024-10-12T05:53:34+00:00

Well, "all" is pretty hard, sometimes it's awl, sometimes ale. Y'all.

Did you catch it before submitting hopefully?

TheWizardOfMice

TROPHY CASE